Most of us are taking today to run down our final checklist for the holiday season, making last minute gift purchases, wrapping presents, buying food for the holiday feasts, and looking forward to a few days respite before attempting to slog our way through the hardest month of the selling year.  As I enter into the holiday break I am consumed with January.  If I drop the ball in January, I will struggle all year to catch up. I hate the view from any place in the pack other than out front.  It never changes…

As I close down the year, I am focusing on these things to make January a successful month.  NO! Not a successful month.  My best month ever!

I don’t want to talk about the economy any more!

I work with accounts in lots of different parts of the world. Some of those customers are doing well, others are struggling.  This is exactly the same as it has been every year for the past two decades of my professional selling career.  The economy rises and falls like a tide, albeit not as predictably, and not all boats are lifted evenly.  These two points are common themes:

The businesses that are doing well never talk about the economy.

The businesses that are not doing so well ONLY talk about the economy.

Focusing on the economy, just like focusing on any other reason to fail, is a self-fulfilling prophecy.  I simply don’t want to indulge myself in an excuse for failure, so I am not going to indulge in any more talk about a bad economy.

Selling Products

OR

Solving Problems?

Most business customers are motivated to make a purchase for one of the following reasons.

1. Increasing the top line:  The purchase is something that will drive more revenue to the top line of the business, and in an amount that is believed to exceed to cost of the purchase.

2. Increasing the bottom line: The purchase is something that results in increasing profitability either by adding profit dollars to the gross transaction or by reducing costs in some way.

3. Solving a problem: The purchase is something that improves the operation of the business; makes the business operate more smoothly; increases efficiency, etc.

There are a few other reasons that people make purchases, but those reasons tend to be random and often driven by personality.  They can be great opportunities for a sale, but they are not something around which you can build a sales plan.

The successful sales professional is the person who is focused on improving the health of the customer’s business or at least on making the pain level lower.  The vast majority of the time selling has to be split equally between listening to the customer explain their business situation and discussing how to solve their problems.  Product information can come from a catalog or a website…  Sales come from solving problems for people.

Am I trying to sell a product to this company?

OR

Am I solving problems for this company?

Will you call them for me?

The best leads come from customers who are happy with the work that has just been completed, the products that have just been delivered, the orders that have just been filled; The problems that have just been solved for them. It is a universal truth that people like to share good things with other people. Right at the moment of completion, when the customer is the most satisfied, ask for referrals.  You will be shocked just how often that you will get them.

Take it one step further.  Right after you get the referral ask this simple question.

Will you call them to introduce me?

A call to a prospect where in you say “Hi Bob, this is Leif from Maruyama and I was just speaking with Joe over at…..” is nowhere near as powerful as a hot hand off. Everyone knows a “Name-drop” when they hear one.

“Hey Bob, this is Joe… listen I’m in my shop with Leif from Maruyama and you’ve got to see this new back pack split shaft thing he just showed me…”

The power of a personal appeal from a satisfied customer is amazing.

Warm wishes to you for a pleasant holiday and a good rest before charging into the best January ever!

But in the mean time, my friend and fellow bloger Michelle Cyr has some great holiday suggestions for you.  You can read her article in it’s original location here, or I have taken the liberty of republishing her work below.  Thanks Mich…

A Few Tips For A Holiday Filled With Laughter…

Ok, I am a bit of a joker. I LOVE to laugh and play games. Here are a few of my favorites to spice up the holiday and make sure that everyone’s bellies ache from laughing so hard.

The Pregnant Turkey

The night before, pre-cook a cornish game hen. When your hostess isn’t looking, insert the cooked hen into the Turkey cavity. WARNING, you will never live this one down. I am still paying for this joke from 4 years ago.

The Never Ending Gift.

Find a bunch of nesting sized boxes, the more the better. Put the gift in the smallest one and gift wrap every single box, putting it into the next larger box. This is EXTREMELY funny when you have a TON of boxes – like 30. This works particularly well where each family member opens the gift, one at a time while everyone watches.

Pristine Christmas Tree

Have a family member who is VERY proud of their all white light pristine tree? Take a few of your blinking light bulbs and replace them into their tree when no one is looking. They won’t notice for a while but when they do, the look on their face will be priceless.

The Largest Lift – Needle in a Haystack

Go to Sears and ask for an empty refrigerator box. Ball up lots and lots of newspaper in individual pieces. Wrap the gift (hopefully pretty small) in newspaper.

The Loudest Gift

Purchase a kazoo (or any other really loud instrument) and wrap it. Put the gift with your nephew’s name on it right on the hood of the car after everyone has arrived at your home. The child will HAVE to open the gift on the way home.

Duck Taped Gift

Purchase a roll of duck tape and use it as wrapping paper. Be sure to hide all of the knives in the house before the gift opening commences.

My advice: have fun, don’t worry about your diet too much, drink plenty and really LISTEN to the laughter. It’s contagious and will add years to your life!

Have a VERY Merry Holiday Season.

Fuel is Destroying Your Two Cycle Equipment

The landscape business depends on hand held equipment.  The gold standard for power and reliability combined with lightweight and ease of operation is the two-cycle engine.  However, the fuel available today at the pump is wreaking havoc for operators, owners, and most significantly repair technicians; costing time, money, and decimating profits for professional users.

According to Pete Fernald, Technical Services Manager for Maruyama “Fully 75% or more of all two cycle engine repairs are directly caused by fuel related issues.”  Fernald goes on to say that these issues can be caused by the use of:

• Improper Oil Ratio Mixtures
• Old Fuel
• Ethanol in the fuel

Proper Oil Mixture Ratios

Virtually all of today’s two-cycle engines operate on a fuel to oil mix ratio of 50:1.  That translates to 2.6 ounces of oil for every gallon of gasoline.  It is very important to properly mix fuel to oil.  New, modern, EPA compliant two-cycle engines are very sensitive to fuel to oil mixtures.  Counter-intuitively, mixing too much oil is actually worse than mixing slightly less than optimal amounts of oil. Richer oil mixtures actually cause residual petroleum compounds to build up in the ring lands resulting in ring seizure and engine failure.

Fuel to oil mixtures are often dictated by the size fuel container being used.  Oil packaging is sized to match the most commonly available fuel container sizes.

Recently, there has been a shift in fuel container sizes available in stores from the most commonly purchased 2.5 gallon container down to a 2 gallon container.  This presents a significant problem when mixing fuel and oil because the tendancy is to use a 6.4 ounce, 2.5 gallon oil bottle with the 2 gallon can.  However, the result of such a mix is to have a 40:1 mixture of fuel to oil.  This can result in severe engine damage and dramatically shortened engine life spans, often times cutting and engine’s life span from more than 1500 operating hours to less than a few hours!

Be extra vigilant when mixing fuel to oil for your two cycle engines.  Remember, more oil than required is NOT beneficial to your engine, but rather detrimental.

The Impact Of Old Fuel

Today’s gasoline is not a single compound, but rather a highly complex blend of more than two hundred, to as many as five hundred different hydro-carbons.  This mixture of compounds is not shelf (or rather fuel container) stable for a long period of time without the addition of a significant fuel stabilizer such as Sta-bil, or the use of a premium two cycle mixing oil like Maruyama XD Extreme Duty Two Cycle Mix Oil.  Without the addition of one of these compounds, the fuel quickly begins to lose volatility.  This translates to a loss of power in your engine, and harder starting, as well as gum and varnish buildups in the fuel system

The best practice is to mix only enough fuel for NO MORE THAN one or two days use at a time.  Even with the addition of fuel stabilizers, the best idea is to use your two-cycle fuel quickly for optimal performance.

The Impact of Ethanol in Fuel

The most problematic fuel related issues in the two-cycle engine space today are those issues relating to the use of ethanol as a motor fuel. For the past several years ethanol has been touted as the fuel of the future for the United States.  While this debate continues at many levels of government and while litigation winds it’s way through the court systems; the two-cycle engine industry contends with the serious fall out of ethanol as a fuel.

Ethanol causes two-cycle engine trouble in many ways, including:

• Degreasing and delubricating of engines.
• Attacking and degrading soft components of engines.
• Enleaning the fuel:air mixture.
• Decreasing engine power
• Water damage to engines

Ethanol is added to fuel primarily as an oxygenating compound.  In fact, while straight run gasoline contains 0% oxygen, Ethanol contains 37% oxygen as part of it’s chemical foundation.  Translated to the impact on your equipment, ethanol fuels with 10% ethanol concentrations result in a 4% increase in oxygen to the fuel:air mixture.  This is the same net effect as leaning out the carburetor.

Ethanol is an excellent solvent.  It dissolves grease, oil, and it attacks soft compounds like plastic, rubber, and aluminum.  The problem is that two-cycle engines depend on mix oil for lubrication while the ethanol in fuels attempts to delubricate the engine.  The solvent properties of ethanol cause damage to the plastic and rubber components of the fuel system, and in fact attack the aluminum structure of the engine itself over time.  In fact, ethanol attacks virtually every component of a two cycle engine causing major and potentially engine killing damage along the way.

Ethanol is Hygroscopic

Hygroscopy is the ability of a substance to attract and hold water molecules from the surrounding environment.  Ethanol claims moisture from the air, and the result is that ethanol, left to sit for a period of time, gathers moisture into water, and if subsequently used as fuel robs the engine of power, and causes damage to the fuel system due to gum and varnish deposits.

Left to sit for a relatively short period of time, the ethanol in fuel will bond to water in the atmosphere and leave a layer of water in the fuel container.  This process, called phase separation, results in water buildup in the fuel container.

Water-bearing ethanol fuel also causes internal engine damage due to improper combustion, and can result in dangerous temperature spikes of the exhaust system as the un-combusted fuel mixture reaches the heated catalyst of the exhaust system.

The threat of damage to two-cycle engines from ethanol is very serious and in fact is the number one cause of engine damage today in the two-cycle world.

Best Practices For Fuel In The Two-Cycle Industry

According to Pete Fernald, Technical Service Manager at Maruyama, here are some “Best Practices” that will result in a reduction in fuel related issues and repairs.

• When possible, purchase fuels that contain NO ethanol.
• Mix fuel to oil very carefully.  Always insure that you maintain a 50:1 mix ratio.
• Never mix oil to a “Richer” ratio than manufacturer recommendations.
• Mix only enough fuel to last one or two days at a time.
• Always have the same person on your crew mix your fuel:oil mixtures.
• Purchase fuels only from high volume, reputable retailers.
• Store your machines with the fuel tank at 95% of capacity to reduce the introduction of atmospheric moisture into the fuel system.
• Always use a fuel stabilizing additive like Sta-Bil or Maruyama XD Two Cycle oil.
• When in doubt, dispose of your older fuel and start over with fresh fuel and a fresh oil mix.

These practices, along with regular professional maintenance of your equipment can dramatically reduce your labor and repair costs, and increase the dollars posted to your bottom line.

There is a man in Austin Texas who operates a very successful electronics distribution company.  His name is James.  I once had the pleasure of sharing a lunch with James during which I asked him how he had become such a success.  He gracefully deflected my fawning over him, and spoke at length about building a company with the help of family and friends and some luck and a fair bit of vision. (My words, not his.  He is a very humble man.)  At the end of the meal as we walked out to the car park he put his hand on my shoulder and said “Leif, I guess you could best say that I built the company one friend at a time, because all things being equal, people want to do business with their friends.  The secret is that even when things aren’t quite so equal, they still want to do business with their friends.”

I told you that story so that I could tell you this one…

A salesman that I used to work with, Christopher Doyle, always used to say on his telephone calls “What can I DO FOR YOU TODAY?”  He meant it too.  Make no mistake, when Chris asked that question he was actually hopeful that someone would ask him to do something.  Sometimes it was something that resulted in a sale, but more often than not it would be some small thing… tracking down an invoicing issue, correcting a shipping problem, or it would be nothing at all save for a polite thank you from the customer before the call ended.

At the company where we worked together, the quarterly numbers were EVERYTHING and we would all spend the last week of the quarter on the telephone “Dialing for dollars.”  No one could bring the orders in like Chris Doyle.  He was GREAT at grabbing those last minute quarter makers that we all depend on as sales managers to hit the budget.  How in the world did Chris do this?  Quarter after quarter?  Simply this; Chris did for others first, and only asked for contributions from others long after he had established his value to them.

Chris made all of his deposits in the favor bank early, and he drew against the interest when it was necessary.

In his book “The Little Black Book Of Connections” sales guru Jeffery Gitomer writes:

“Who can you count on?

And who’s counting on you?

Who would you call at two

in the morning?  Is anybody at home?”*

No one likes to take a call from someone who is perpetually calling them FOR things.  Everyone likes to take a call from someone who is calling to HELP with things.    By adding value to the relationship first, before you draw on it you are making an investment that pays off in faith, friendship, and yes… from time to time, in business.

*The Little Black Book of Connections, Jeffery Gitomer, Pg 7, Copyright 2006, published by Bard Press, Austin Texas

Scotsco’s Jon Castleman pictured here in his truck.

Jon Castleman gets the Johnny Hustle Award this week…  Not that I really award one, nor is there one every week.  But my point is that Jon Castleman hustles.  I mean this man really MOVES in his territory.  I travelled with him a few weeks ago, and he kept me so busy that I didn’t even think to shoot this picture until he was dropping me off at the airport!

The REAL Sales Office; what do I mean by this?  I mean that Jon understands in no uncertain terms that he only sells when he is in front of customers.  He gets orders when he is in his customer’s stores.  In the three days that we traveled together I never failed once to watch Jon get an order of some kind. Not every order was large, but he never failed to ask for an order, and was always rewarded with one for his efforts. It was a pleasure and a privilege to watch Jon ply his trade.

It goes without saying that even the best sales people on the planet hit a dry spell.  It isn’t my intent to imply that an order on every stop is realistic, albeit it is a great mark for which we should all aim.  But rather I am asking the question: “How much time are you getting in front of customers?”

My very first sales manager, Jim Mattson from Telephone Associates Long Distance, once said to me “A salesman in the office is a waste of time and money.  I’ve looked all over the office, never found a customer hiding in there anywhere.  Now get out there and sell something kid.”

Jim was a very smart man.